Wafa Zoghbor is an Associate Professor at the Department of Languages, College of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zayed University, UAE. She presented and published widely about the Phonology of English as a Lingua Franca and teaching the Pronunciation of ELF.
This presentation reports on the results of an empirical study on the effect of pronunciation instructions on improving two aspects of Arab learners’ speech samples; intelligibility (which refers to the recognition of the sounds in the individual utterance) and comprehensibility (which refers to as understanding the meaning of the utterance is the given context). Data was triangulated form two resources. First, a quasi-experimental study where one of the groups of learners received pronunciation instructions (based on Received Pronunciation / General American instructions), and the other groups taught a modified version of these instructions focusing on a set of features that are argued to be the minimal requirements to result in intelligible and comprehensible speeches. The second was semi-structured interviews with 76 native and non-native listeners. The results showed that there is no significant differences in the level of intelligibly and comprehensibility of the two groups of leaners which raises questions about strict adherence to native speaker models. The presentation will provide details about the contents of the intervention drawing conclusions about teaching English pronunciation to multi-dialect first language learners.
